Dreams, drawings and psychoanalytic fun

Menu

Tag Archives: customer service

I’d booked to see a play – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead – at the theatre I used to work at. But whereas the real venue is in a modern building, this one was a tall Victorian edifice with a steep rake on each of the four tiers.

I’d been keen enough that I came to see the show on my own – maybe it was last minute, maybe no-one else had been available – and I expected to feel fairly at home anyway since I knew the theatre and some of the staff there. But I hadn’t been sent a ticket, only a reference number to my phone, and when I got to the entrance to the upper gallery, I couldn’t find any trace of email or text from the theatre. I kept telling the usher – a young, cynical guy with a curling lip – that I’d seen it on my phone immediately before I left the house, that I had paid, that I used to work here. My anger was rising (an anger I recognise well from real life, any time I feel I’m being patronised, disrespected, talked down to or blocked by bureaucracy). A group of school children in their early teens and private school uniforms – green and black kilts on the girls, blazers – were lined up at the other entrance just feet away from me, and I felt them and their teachers waiting to judge me if I showed my anger or tried to demand on being let in.

The literal background for this one was that I had tried to book tickets to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the Old Vic in London, with K, to find that they were almost sold out and the few remaining would cost, if not your firstborn, then at least some small person to whom you were vaguely attached. But I wasn’t angered by not being able to get oltickets. Fair enough, I should have got onto it as soon as I heard the show was premiering. Somewhere else in my life – or in a lot of aspects of life – there is a recurrent, simmering anger that things are being made difficult for me somehow.

I’ve been to this dream-theatre before, I think, and looked from the entrance to the grand circle or gallery, down towards the stage. But the floor has been absent, there was only water or a sheer drop beneath me. I think I’ve been due either to perform there or to work as an usher, and haven’t been able to get from one part of the theatre to another.

In this dream, after being turned away by the first usher I spoke to, I saw one of the duty managers I used to know, who said she might be able to sneak me in if I waited til the show had just started. But I found myself walking through dark corridors not being able to find my way back to the auditorium. As I recall that, I’m reminded of a dream I had just under a year ago, when I was performing in a far larger show than I’ve done in real life…but more about that in another blog.

Two boys of about eighteen or nineteen, who shared a bedroom as students. One saw his various sexual conquests as a sign of his machismo and boldness. The other considered lust to be shameful and weak, and regularly told his room-mate that his behaviour was sinful. In reality, their sex lives differed very little, and each one was writing a confessional memoir. Both books featured the same sex object, a girl who both young men were regularly sleeping with, and whose name had one letter different from mine.

A would-be erotic dream where I’m in bed, possibly in a hotel, with an unidentified casual who (according to the dream) I’ve seen a few times before. But he’s unattractively sweaty and I’m considering telling him I don’t want to meet again after today. He climaxes (I think?) and sort of half-heartedly suggests starting again after he’s had a rest, but he sounds grumpy at the idea of having to attend to my pleasure, and I’m not sure I can stomach it anyway.

Staying the night a hotel with my mum and Sibling. We met in the restaurant for breakfast, but since I don’t do well at mornings, the other two were there before me. I arrived just after 10am to find that the restaurant, which was Portugese-influenced, had stopped serving its breakfast menu. Apparently, the Portugese don’t really have specially designated breakfast foods, so fry-ups and cereal were only served as a concession to unadvanturous guests before 10am. After that, you picked from the standard restaurant menu that was available all day. I had some kind of lightly spiced pork and rice concoction, which was delicious but not the eggs royale I’d had in mind. Next to our table, another family (middle-aged parents, teenage or young adult children) were kicking up a stink about the restaurants total disregard to its customers’ needs. Coming over here, taking away our food-based traditions…

At a wedding reception with a particularly fine standard of catering. I mean, everything we ate was the bomb. The waiters just kept bringing out trays of food, multiple options for each course, for you to have as much of whatever you wanted. By dessert, most of the other guests were full to the point of shirts bursting open, but I’d paced myself. I knew there were going to be five, maybe six different desserts all brought out one after another and who knew which would be the best without being prepared to try them all?

I was still labouring contentedly, with my defeated fellow-diners splayed out on their chairs like exploded slugs, when the waiters brought out the sixth dessert. There were long white trays holding an individual glass, like a large shot glass, for each guest. What I tasted a teaspoonful of can’t be described in terms of mere banoffee cheescake.

Now, I happened to know that this particular dessert was somehow associated with Elvis Presley, and that although I’d never seen this myself, some restaurants / hotels that served it would use chocolate sauce to drizzle a copy of the King’s signature on the serving tray. I asked our waiter if I could have Elvis’ autograph in chocolate sauce, but the waiter’s first language was from a different European country, and he didn’t understand my request. I said it was cool; if he could just leave the full tray on the empty table next to ours, I’d get round to my share and probably then some, after I’d finished what was already on my plate. But such was the other guests’ opposition towards eating any more, almost no sooner had the waiters and waitresses brought out these desserts than they were coming back to take them away. I shooed two black-and-white clad members of staff away, but when the third came round – and my mouth was still full – I found I didn’t have the energy to explain again that I was getting round to it…

When I woke up I had Black and Gold by Sam Sparro stuck in my head, a song I haven’t (knowingly) heard in years but which told me that a YouTube video I’d recently watched was probably the trigger for the dream. I love listening to ASMR videos because they help me sleep, which is of course essential for my research. This was the first video I’d seen by cutebunny992, and in it she described her recent “dream” wedding. Marianne’s repetition of the word dream (at 0:48 and 2:33) acted as a direct suggestion for my literal dream. Her chosen colour scheme – white, gold and black – was reflected in my subconscious choice of music.

My aformentioned ex, while we were still together, giving me a printed black t-shirt for my birthday.

We got it from a shop that catered for goth / alternative types but was run by a small middle-aged man who didn’t really know or personally care much about an alternative scene. (As I remember the dream, he reminds me a bit of the Engineer from Miss Saigon.) I tried to wear the t-shirt that night when we went out clubbing, but even as I was doing my makeup to go out, it started to come apart at the seams.

We took it straight back to the shop for a replacement but the guy, having served us just hours earlier, denied memory of us and wouldn’t refund or directly replace. He tried to fob me off by getting me to choose from some other, much less expensive items.

Eventually I negotiated to get a selection of small gifts to roughly compensate the value of the t-shirt. To find anything that took my fancy, I’d had to go through obscure boxes and shelves, delving further than the average customer might. I found a tiny book of (metaphysical?) poetry, bound in pale cream leather. Quite a precious find, to be fair, discarded with no sense of its value. Otherwise, I just got some bits of tat so unmemorable they haven’t made it to awake-mind, and – wtfsubconscious? – a massive bottle of lube.

I’d organised group tickets to see a dance performance, at a theatre I used to work in. This show was the latest full-length piece by a small contemporary dance company who I’d seen a few times over the years, and I told a bunch of my friends they needed to see it.

Sibling and I rocked up to the theatre, which had been refurbished and parts of it rebuilt since I was last there. There was now a long, straight corridor with the bar area to our right as we went in, and to the left, the smallest of their auditoria, where the dance company would perform. No-one else from our group was there yet; I said I’d skip to the bathroom and Sibling offered to get the drinks in while I was there. When I asked if a glass of prosecco could possibly be obtained (I don’t know why since there are better drinks than prosecco) he pointed out it was two-for-one so he may as well get me a flute for each hand.

The corridor leading to the ladies’ toilets seemed to keep extending and gaining extra turns and sub-areas leading off it. I wasn’t worried about making it, but about getting back in time; having arrived well before my friends, I knew that by now they would be here and wondering where I was, and Sibling would be left to fend for himself with, presumably, four drinks but no company to share them.

I was getting increasingly fretful as I tried to find my way back to the auditorium; the tickets for my entire group were in my pocket so if the theatre wasn’t admitting latecomers, Sibling and all my friends would miss out too. I felt anger rising to near-hysteria; why was the theatre layout so irrational, why were they hindering me?

At last a friendly, young woman ushered me in; the seating area was kind of sunken into the floor. L and A, friends of about ten years, waved to get my attention. Sibling and the others were there. I sat inbetween my ex and my recent-current, and almost immediately I wanted to hold hands with each of them on either side; I felt I couldn’t take either one’s hand without the other feeling left out.

wtf, subconscious?

It’s only when writing this dream up (as has often happened since I started wtfsubconscious) that I spot a connection between the two glasses of prosecco and the two lovers (ex and current). The dominant emotions in the dream were anxiety and frustration, and that extends to the two-of-each situation. Sibling buys me two drinks, but then we’re separated so I can’t actually have them. Two men have (or have had) romantic feelings for me, but I’m too anxious about the potential consequences to relax with this. In waking life, I know that I do have a fear that “you can’t have everything,” or that seeking “too much of a good thing” will end badly for me. At times, that fear has been pretty paralysing. At present, I’ve been trying to ignore it but this dream seems to let me know the anxiety is still there.

How about you, readers? Have you had similar dreams to this one, and what did you make of them?